


and i took you by the hand, and we stood tall

by ElbridgeGerry



Series: low lie the fields of athenry [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: 3 ABY, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-ANH, Pre-ESB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28704564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElbridgeGerry/pseuds/ElbridgeGerry
Summary: Hera and Wedge have a conversation.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla, Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker
Series: low lie the fields of athenry [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104737
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	and i took you by the hand, and we stood tall

There are things she will have to do tomorrow — inspect her troops, for one. Fight Ackbar for the right to use Rogue Squadron on her next recon tour, for another. These are the important things, the practical things that will get her through her day. Now, it seems as if this damned blockade run has taken half the installation with it, and the silence is terrifying. 

It always unnerves her that the such a big base could get so quiet; even when her team had been at its smallest, the terrifying silence of space had never penetrated the hulls of her ships.

Haven is different. There’s something about remaining perched just outside the outer limits of the galaxy that makes all the ships fall quiet, from the largest capital ships to the smallest light freighters. Even the fighters seem to cut the comm chatter as they approach the Rebel fleet. 

_ I would’ve hated this.  _

The corridors between her quarters and the canteen are deserted. Good. She can’t stop the forward slump of her shoulders and she doesn’t want to try. It’s probably healthy for the soldiers to see that even the generals have bad days too, but she can’t bear to let her grief be public. It would be like acknowledging that she has something to grieve at all, which she just can’t do. 

Jacen squirms, cooing lightly and tiredly as he adjusts to a comfier position in her arms. She could have left him in his cot in her quarters and he might have slept the whole night through, but she couldn’t risk him waking up to an empty room. So she’d pulled him from his bed, smoothing his shock of green hair down, and cradled him in her arms. 

He’s almost too big for her to do this now — he can walk and talk, and soon enough, no doubt, he’ll be telling her he can do it all himself. ( _You wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, love._ ) That much is inevitable, that much is in his blood. For now, though, she is mesmerised by how much someone could possibly rely on her, how her whole world now revolves around this little dozing figure. 

Kallus answers on the second knock. He looks wired, hair sticking up at odd angles and fatigues crumpled. They are similar in how they cope with the weight of the galaxy, and she is no stranger to this grief-induced mania. He takes Jacen without so much as a question, and she is reminded why she appreciates him so much. He doesn’t need to ask prying questions to know how she’s doing, a glance is all he needs to know that she’s falling apart. 

The door whirs shut behind him and Jacen, and she presses her hand to the cold metal, grounding herself in the moment.

_ C’mon sweetheart, that tea won’t make itself.  _

Autopilot takes over, guiding her to the canteen, and she wonders at what point she’d become so passive towards this day. What had set her off down this solemn path? 

The room is empty, save for a dark-haired pilot she knows well. She doesn’t want company tonight, but he’s not company, he’s almost family at this point, even if she rarely does get to see him. 

He nods at her, terse and sad, when she sits opposite him with her mug of tea. Wedge is mourning too, in his own way, even if mourning has become a routine activity for these brave pilots of the Rebellion. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, though he owes her no explanation. 

“I couldn’t either.” She looks at the datapad in front of him, eyeing the crude drawings she recognises as flight formations. 

“Just seeing where the weaknesses are,” he shrugs. 

It’s been five years since they picked him up from Skystrike. Five long years that have taken him from an upbeat (if naive) teenaged cadet to a disciplined and respected commander. Each time she sees him there are new lines traversing his face. She wonders if he sees the same thing when he looks at her. 

“How long has it been?” She can talk plainly with him,  someone has to. 

“Thirty-three days.” There’s a whine in his voice she’s not used to hearing. It’s a whine she knows well: every single hour hurts, to have to explain the time elapsed in days is torture. 

“And no sign of him?” Wedge shakes his head. The gesture is so controlled it gives up far too much about his emotional state. He’s teetering on the brink of collapse. With a pokerface like that he could never be one of her spies. 

“It gets easier,” she tells him. They both know it’s a lie, but she feels like she should say it anyways. 

“At least it’s  only him,” he straightens the bottom edge of his datapad against the edge of the table, tapping it with his thumbs until it aligns just-so. “Have you heard from Sabine?” 

Sabine. Another loss-that-is-not-a-loss. Another missing face that makes her cry herself to sleep at night, even if she is theoretically only one comm call away. 

“She’s fine. She’s doing fine. Lothal is safe,” she tries in vain to keep the sorrow from slipping into her voice. Hera had never shied away from blazing her own path in life, why should Sabine?

_Because no parent wants to let their kids go._

  
Wedge clears his throat, and Hera looks back up at his face. His eyes are glassy, and he’s looking towards the nearest window, picking at a loose thread on his flight suit like it’s personally insulted him. 

“They all, uh,” he scratches his stubble awkwardly, “they all seem to think that this was a foregone conclusion. That the remaining Jedi are living on borrowed time, so it’s no surprise when they drop dead.” If anyone else in the galaxy had said that to her she’d have shot them dead, but the pain that radiates off him is so familiar it’s like looking into a mirror. 

And he’s right, of course. It’s not just the Rebellion either, the whole Galaxy seems to know that the Jedi now exist only to sacrifice themselves heroically and die. Seeing a Jedi is no longer a harbinger of hope but an omen of death, like looking at an endangered species being slowly lowered into the jaws of its predator. 

The ghosts of their happiness dance in the space between them. 

“We picked up a signal from the Unknown Regions the other day and I — I…” he rubs his eyes. “I don’t know, I thought it was Ezra, maybe.” 

“He’s not coming back,” she rasps and Wedge nods. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know that, but it helps, sometimes, to imagine that he’ll come back someday.”

She has lost many families in her life, more families than most people ever get to have. She has one still, and she knows she should consider herself lucky.

“You’re too young for this,” she says, feeling very old indeed. “You need your hope.” She reaches across the table, taking Wedge’s trembling hands in her own. “He’s not dead. We know he isn’t. Every day more and more transmissions pour in, they are every bit as desperate to find him as we are.” 

Wedge squeezes her hands, a reminder that she is still inside her own body. 

Neither of them speak. Sometimes there are no words to express the pain, but sitting here, holding each other’s sorrows, this can be enough for her. 

“You should come visit me more.” Her voice is unexpectedly hoarse with emotion. “Jacen loves you, you know that.”

Wedge smirks at her. “You only want me around for my babysitting prowess.”

_ Not too long ago we were babysitting you, flyboy.  _

“What else are families for?” 

His smirk shifts into a smile, and the silence falls again. This time, it doesn’t scare her. 


End file.
